Artificial & Machine Intelligence: Future Fact, or Fantasy?

While a warning about the application of AI and intelligent machines (IMs) in the area of military application might be appropriate, what if they're just a natural branch on the the tree of natural evolution?

An eminent group of scientists -- Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell (Berkeley), and Max Tegmark (MIT) -- perhaps stimulated by the film Transcendence, and possibly even the recent EE Times debate “Robot Apocalypse” led by Max Maxfield, has issued what might be considered a warning about the possible danger of robots and artificial intelligence (AI). Such a warning about the application of AI and its derivative intelligent machines (IMs), especially in the area of military application, might be appropriate. But what if IMs are really just a new branch on the tree of evolution that has led us from the original Protists to where we are today (see Figure 1 below)?

Figure 1. Are artificial and machine intelligence the next step in evolution for humans?
(Source: Ron Neale)

The danger may not be some sort of catastrophic accident that ends human existence but the uncontrollable forces of evolution, resulting in the same outcome. Fear not, because in my view, for IMs to come into existence requires a unique evolutionary key. In Figure 1, I have introduced the concept of Synergistic Evolution (SE) to describe that key, and it is that aspect of evolution that suggests why it might not ever occur.

Synergistic Evolution (SE) requires a species to be aided in its evolutionary process by another species. This is not the same as acting as a food stuff, where the existence of an earlier species acts as the food or fuel that allows those higher up the chain to exist and evolve. Or where species like dogs or horses that exist at the same time, on a different branch, allows a species to more easily obtain food to exist and evolve.

The nearest equivalent example of SE might be a species variation such as selective breeding (unnatural selection), where human intervention is used to provide a characteristic, such as additional meat or milk in cattle or in hunting animals, dogs, or horses.

In any flight of fancy, I think the three options as illustrated in the next chart from left to right must be considered as possibilities: the first option of the evolution of some very clever tools, weapons, and body parts that become an integral part of the human species tree; or the second option as originally drawn in Figure 1 of a new branch on the tree of evolution; or the third option an extension of the human branch.

I have not attempted to provide a time scale for the vertical part of Figure 2, although I was very tempted to suggest that the horizontal scale from left to right might be considered as possibly a log scale of bovine excrement.

To be or not to be
As it will be the products and efforts of the electronics industry and its people that make possible this next step on the tree of evolution, if there is danger ahead, will they let it happen, or will they even be able to control it? Or will the artificial intelligence reach a level where it will understand the nature of human emotions and manipulate something like greed or desire to create an environment leading to the required IMs? Manipulation now plays a key role in politics and life, and it results from a misuse of some of the products of the electronics industry.

What will an IM species look like? Will it have a human-like form? Evolution has provided us humans with a pretty good engine, which consumes a variety of readily available food and oxygen. If the IMs copy that, then some of their parts might have human characteristics.

Preposteous. The thought the "evolution can be programmed into a computer" is so absurd, that I immediately don't know how to react to it. I've programmed a lot of computers, but the thought of including evolution into computers, which is an extremely valuable human abstract concept, provided by Darwin and Huxley in the 19th century, is beyond my imagination. How would you do that? Certainly you could not input a bunch of character strings, or operations on and manipulation of same. That would be, on it's face, absurd.

Are you in charge of the Universe, or what? Truly, how would you do that?

Machines can't think. Most digital computers can encode and perform rudimentary mathematical operations on a small subset of the rational numbers, and they can encode and store character strings provided by people (like these here), and aggregate, count and arrange them in various ways, following algorithms provided by a person or persons But they don't know anything, and it doesn't mean anything (to them). Meaning is a relation between two or more persons and some object, usually (but not always) some kind of a semiotic entity.

Symbols (e.g., words) are far too simple to mean. Thought is also too simple to mean. When you or I think, that does not mean anything, either, because there is no relation between two people, a necessary condition.

If I "interact" ( a word I believe inappropriate) with a computer running say a neural net symbol manipulator, I am actually interacting with the algorithm writer (another person, or persons).

Cosmologists tell us that the star we call the Sun appeared 4.6 billion years ago, and the Earth around 100 million years later. Life maybe a billion years after that.

Humans like us have been around 150,000 years or so, and there hasn't been much important evolutionary change in us since then (blue eyes?). Evolutionary change does not occur in a time dimension that is the same as that in which social discourse occurs. Lots of things change (we learned to read and write about 4-5 thousand years ago), but that has nothing to do with evolution.

I have enormous respect for people working in the field "Artificial and Machine Intelligence", but you guys sure do talk funny. Confusing.

Sofianitz:- WOW First Order Predicate Logic You may well be right. However, would you say the division of and replication of strands of DNA matches your requirements as a predicated logic activity. Where the intention of who ever "designed" it ( No we don't do God) was to effect perfect replication. Yet somehow this process can introduce effects and the changes which allowed the evolution that got you from some primitive cells to where you are today writing in EETimes. I think you must allow for the fact that when the level of complexity is high unintended and un-predicated changes can be introduced.

I think the point I tried to make in my, as you say"absurd" diagrams ,was the absolute necessity of a period of synergistic evolution for the machine branch to exist. I think my question fact or fantasy was clear.

I think machines, are not enough concious to be judged for anything, humans are, and the people who make these things have to evaluate their potential conflicts of interest regarding more functionality on a system that can lead to dangerous side effects, or to study in depth what can be done without harming others such as anti malware Operating Systems, safe by construction languages and ethical matters, anyway, this has been done in Nuclear research with mild results, so should be done with good judgment, but in hands of psycopaths this is not looking good, for neither humans nor machines

The future is going to be very interesting with machines trying to become like more human and humans trying to become more machines. Its just the emotions and intelligence that will separate them. I guess many sci-fi movies are going to get real.

Evolution can be programmed into a computer... However, that evolution would be limited by the explicit or implicit parameters of the original program. Much like mammals are limited to a bone structure with 4 arms/legs... (not completely true, but I hope you get the point)

This basically means a 28nm machine "species" wouldn't be able to "evolve" a into 20nm machine without priori knowledge of physics & material properties (not likely to be done anytime soon), not without the help of human researchers.

What would evolution be useful for? software development & digital design? possibly. An evolutionary algorithm could be used to develop a better evolutionary algorithm or a better CPU so that the evolutionary algorithm can run faster. but that's wouldn't be a true AI as it would have been limited by the parameters of the initial program.

wc0 mentionned a great point: computer viruses replicate and spread "like life". However, it wouldn't be "like life" until they start to be programmed to self-mutate to adapt to various environments, and possibly enter in symbiossis with other forms of viruses in order to keep self-replicating. This aspect of mutation is, to my knowledge, still absent from computer programs, and until programs start to self-mutate (& possibly "die" in order to free resources to later generations), I won't be able to consider a program "alive". Let alone intelligent.

Would it be good to write such a program? depends... could we force into such a program the 3 laws of robotics?

I don't believe in this recursive self-improvement idea. All big improvements in technology are the result of a diverse mix of technologies coming together and involve extensive experimentation in the real world. It won't just happen inside a computer. Also the real world sets hard limits on how far you can go.

Computers can store huge amounts of data and manipulate it very quickly. That's a nice trick but useful applications are not limitless. You can label certain types of computation as intelligence, if you like, but that doesn't change anything. Evolution shows that intelligence is not universally favoured, it just enhances survival chances in certain scenarios.